entirely new device,
to defeat a bill by permitting the period of less than ten days to
expire at the close of the session--defeat it without action, without
expression of opinion, without the responsibility which justly attaches
to the Executive office. Commenting with great power, at the time,
upon the new use of the veto-power in all its forms by President
Jackson, Mr. Webster declared its tendency was "to disturb the harmony
which ought always to exist between Congress and the Executive, and to
turn that which the Constitution intended only as an extraordinary
remedy for extraordinary cases, into a common means of making Executive
discretion paramount to the discretion of Congress in the enactment of
laws." It was literally making the extreme medicine of the
Constitution its daily bread.

An example set by so strong a ruler as Jackson, especially in the
establishment of a practice so congenial to man's natural love of
power, was certain to be followed by other Presidents. It was
followed so vigorously indeed that the forty years succeeding Jackson's
advent to power presented a strong contrast with the forty years that
preceded it. The one began with Washington, the other ended with
Andrew Johnson. Mr. Van Buren, though in all respects a lineal heir
to the principles of Jackson, did not imitate him in the frequent use
of the veto-power. But Mr. Tyler on nine different occasions ran
counter to the action of Congress by the interposition of his veto.
Mr. Polk resorted to it in three signal instances, but neither General
Taylor nor Mr. Fillmore came in conflict with Congress on a single
measure. President Pierce almost rivaled General Jackson in the ten
vetoes with which he emphasized his own views as distinct from those of
Congress. Mr. Buchanan used his arbitrary power on four occasions
during his term. Mr. Lincoln permitted one bill to be defeated, as
already noted in these pages, by expiration of Congress, and arrested
the passage of another by direct use of his veto. President Johnson,
who in many features of his career has been suspected of an attempted
imitation of Jackson, far surpassed his great prototype in the use of
the veto-power, employing it directly in no less than twenty-one
instances, besides pocketing at least two bills of public importance.
The aggregate number of vetoes, therefore, in the forty years that
followed General Jackson's first election exceeded fifty, as against
six for the fo